Spitting or sanitised silence - how yob culture lost its happy medium

First, let me say from the start I do not have any time for those feral Richmond fans who spat at coach Danny Frawley as he walked from the ground last Friday.

No matter how badly your team is going, chances are the coach is an honourable man who is busting his guts to turn things around and thus deserves your respect. And, in this case, respect means not spitting at him until he has been given a fair chance to either put on a raincoat or make a dash for one of the rubber inflatable "phlegm guards" being considered by the AFL.

Nor do I want to be lumped in with the moronic mob that created its own standing room during a Bulldogs-Roosters match at Aussie Stadium last month. As far as I'm concerned, you don't rip out seats, let alone use them as missiles, until they have been vacated.

However, as the censorious media coverage of these events demonstrates, there is an under-lying problem for the disgruntled fan - in these changed times, how do we express our discontent?

While footy clubs ask us to be passionate about the team, it has become difficult to do so without being, at one extreme, hushed by the so-called theatregoers who don't appreciate our loud and colourful interpretation of on-field events, or at the other, invited to spend a romantic night for two in a police lock-up with a 145-kilogram felon called Killer.

Which is not to say there are not good reasons for the change in match-day etiquette.

The Year of the Official taught us that referees not only make a valuable contribution to the game but that it is now an offence in some states to mail incendiary devices to their homes and workplaces.

Meanwhile, the new economics of sport dictate that clubs are more beholden to the corporates and families who come to the footy for a quiet and pleasurable day's viewing than they are to the throw-backs who once populated the suburban terraces. Not only can they chuck us out, they don't need us to come back.

So, like the blokes who walked into their local watering holes in the 1980s only to find they had been turned into tapas and tequila bars, we footy yobs are a bit confused. In the space of a couple of decades we have been removed from our suburban homes, placed into sterile new stadiums and told we will have to behave, incongruously, like civilised human beings.

And footy fans are not the only ones. The traditional practice of hurling beer bottles at members of the English cricket team is another victim of crowd sanitisation - admittedly understandable, given the difficulties of gathering and recycling broken glass.

But, by cleaning up crowds, are we endangering the health of fans whose everyday frustrations were once vented during an afternoon spent hurling abuse at players, umpires and each other from a concrete perch?

This theory is supported by a top-flight psychologist who can't be named because I made him up. "The cathartic experience of screaming, throwing your arms around and generally behaving badly as an anonymous member of a large, unruly mob has many benefits," he said. "And this is just as true at football matches as it is during question time."

While incidents such as spitting and seat-throwing are highlighted by the media, the vast majority of fans have conformed to the new, family-oriented standards. We lock ourselves into our bucket seats, bite our bottom lips and, if we lose, unleash our anger in more socially responsible ways by committing acts of road rage or kicking over neighbours' wheelie bins.

Yet, while the once inalienable right to gob at the coach has been lost to all but a marginalised few, there are still outlets for our displeasure. Radio talkback shows not only cater for our incoherent rants, they reward the best ones with dinner for two at a top-notch seafood restaurant.

There are also many fan websites where well-constructed death threats against under-performing halfbacks can be posted without so much as a nod and a wink to the laws of libel.

At the ground itself, however, the time when a fan could carry on like a pork chop are gone. Now you have to be a player to do that.